Robert Redford Wants To Kill Abe Lincoln

Steven Spielberg still isn’t making his Lincoln movie, but Robert Redford is. THR says he’s directing The Conspirator, a historical drama about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by that Civil War era Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth.

Redford’s film will focus primarily on Mary Surratt, an alleged conspirator of Booth’s. Surrat was a Washington boardinghouse owner and Confederate sympathizer who allegedly supplied Booth and his crony David Herold with weapons after they shot Lincoln and fled to her tavern.

The Conspirator seems to be approaching the Lincoln thing from right angles where Spielberg’s movie sounded more like a straight up biopic. The film’s producers are still casting but word is that James McAvoy is one of their top targets to play one of the movie’s male leads.